Neal Stephenson on Science Fiction, Building Towers 20 Kilometers High ... and Insurance. Speaking before a packed lecture theater at MIT yesterday, Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre’s ability to inspire engineers and scientists.
Terence Mckenna - Schizophrenic or Shamanic? TEMPLE COMPLEX COULD ALTER THEORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. Jason Martell / AncientX.com. The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve just a few thousand years ago, by some fundamentalist interpretations.
Science informs us that this is mere fiction and that man is a few million years old, and that civilization just tens of thousands of years old. Could it be, however, that conventional science is just as mistaken as the Bible stories? There is a great deal of archeological evidence that the history of life on earth might be far different than what current geological and anthropological texts tell us. Consider these astonishing finds: Maxwell's Demon Converts Information into Energy. For the first time, scientists have converted information into pure energy, experimentally verifying a thought experiment first proposed 150 years ago.
The idea was originally formulated by physicist James Clerk Maxwell, but it gained controversy because it appeared to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Put in experimental terms, this law states that when hot and cold water are mixed, they will eventually reach an equilibrium middling temperature. Physicists Convert Information Into Energy. Here’s a fascinating piece of work.
Build a tiny staircase and place a small polystyrene bead on the bottom step (a staircase is fairly straightforward to construct using electric fields). It’s easy to see the bead being jostled around by the random motion of molecules in the surrounding air, the well-known phenomenon of Brownian motion. Most of the time, the Brownian motion tends to knock the bead down the stairs but sometimes the jostling is powerful enough to push the bead up a step. Keep a close eye on the bead using a video camera and every time you see it go up a step, change the electric field so that it cannot drop back down again. Relating Thermodynamic Entropy to Information Entropy with Maxwell's Demon. Brownian motion, the natural vibrations of atoms not at an absolute zero temperature, has long been the strategic key for anyone looking for a way to achieve the holy grail of reversing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that a closed system will always move toward a state of increasing disorder.
I previously covered Richard Feynman’s Brownian Ratchet, which harnessed the power of Brownian motion to turn a rotor, and, as Feynman explains, wouldn’t work because the device would need to be so small that it would vibrate apart from the Brownian motion of its own molecules. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” to quote the old adage, or “You can’t stuff the mushroom cloud back into the shiny uranium sphere,” to quote Robert Heinlein, or “Things fall apart. It’s scientific,” to quote the Talking Heads. Illustration of a Particle Rising in Potential Energy through Information Alone Credit: Nature Physics, doi:10.1038/nphys1821.
Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory. There are close parallels between the mathematical expressions for the thermodynamic entropy, usually denoted by S, of a physical system in the statistical thermodynamics established by Ludwig Boltzmann and J.
Willard Gibbs in the 1870s, and the information-theoretic entropy, usually expressed as H, of Claude Shannon and Ralph Hartley developed in the 1940s. Shannon, although not initially aware of this similarity, commented on it upon publicizing information theory in A Mathematical Theory of Communication. This article explores what links there are between the two concepts, and how far they can be regarded as connected. Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory. There are close parallels between the mathematical expressions for the thermodynamic entropy, usually denoted by S, of a physical system in the statistical thermodynamics established by Ludwig Boltzmann and J.
Willard Gibbs in the 1870s, and the information-theoretic entropy, usually expressed as H, of Claude Shannon and Ralph Hartley developed in the 1940s. Shannon, although not initially aware of this similarity, commented on it upon publicizing information theory in A Mathematical Theory of Communication. This article explores what links there are between the two concepts, and how far they can be regarded as connected. Sacred Economics.
This week, with some of the RS team off the grid at the annual Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, we'll be presenting highlights from the archives.
The following article first ran on Reality Sandwich on February 22, 2010, and is a adapted from the introduction to the upcoming book Sacred Economics. The purpose of the book is to make money and human economy as sacred as everything else in the universe. Today we associate money with the profane, and for good reason. If anything is sacred in this world, it is surely not money. Money seems to be the enemy of all our better instincts, as is clear every time the thought "I can't afford to" blocks an impulse toward kindness or generosity. Ufo ? Mass Sighting. Warning: This may make you feel very very small.
LUNAR LIGHTS ON A HOLLOW MOON? Nevertheless, official NASA transcripts and blatant censorship of audio transmissions don't get any more ominous.
Over the past year, I have discovered that there are many mysteries in which NASA and the moon share. I've already provided some evidence of NASA obscuring certain elements during the Apollo Missions (more below) - but were they already aware and prepared for spooky things being seen or heard on the moon before the Apollo missions were even launched? Strange lights and objects have been recorded on our moon for hundreds of years. In 1787, legendary astronomer, Sir William Herschel, recorded strange lights traveling across the dark lunar surface. Do trees communicate? Networks, networks… Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
New International VersionI form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
New Living TranslationI create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. Magic mushroom’s positive effects lasting over a year, say researchers. By Eric W. DolanWednesday, June 15, 2011 16:45 EDT Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claim to have determined the proper dose levels needed to create positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior that persist for more than a year with the psychoactive substance in so-called “magic mushrooms.”
The findings are the latest in a series of experiments done at Johns Hopkins to investigate psilocybin, a psychedelic substance contained in certain mushrooms. The findings were published online this week in the peer-reviewed journal Psychopharmacology. “In our laboratory, weʼre working with the pure chemical psilocybin, which we can measure out precisely,” he added. SIMILAR: First therapeutic study of LSD in 35 years finishes treatment of last subject. Semmelweis reflex. The Semmelweis reflex or "Semmelweis effect" is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
The term originated from the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered that childbed fever mortality rates reduced ten-fold when doctors washed their hands with a chlorine solution between patients. His hand-washing suggestions were rejected by his contemporaries, often for non-medical reasons. For instance, some doctors refused to believe that a gentleman's hands could transmit disease (see Contemporary reaction to Ignaz Semmelweis). See also[edit] References[edit] SpaceCollective. Terence McKenna - How Psychedelics Became Illegal Chaîne de AlienScientist
Organic Evolution. Unlearn What You Have Learned Proof that genius lies everywhere. If only we can learn to stop learning. read more America’s Obession With Violence. The Solar System is Under Quarantine. This essay will plot out a theory that advanced civilizations existthey’re here as the result of a “USOP” (universal standard operating procedure) andwe’re under quarantine until we reach a state of Total Peace, i.e. the end of all conflict between nations and the use of mass-scale violence to solve disputes and seize power Advanced Civilizations Exist To state that the Earth is the only planet capable of producing intelligent life is a logical absurdism.
Even given the astronomical odds of a star system producing the perfect conditions for life to develop, it’s more likely that there are hundreds of thousands of inhabited planets with intelligent life than there aren’t, simply because of the vast numbers of stars and planets in the cosmos. Astronomers have finally come around in recent years to declare that there are likely tens of thousands of planets capable of supporting life with similar qualities as Earth. RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation 2011-04-19-dark_science_09.jpg (960×1299) Vii. The Sphinx Mystery Robert Temple EQ12:1 (May 2009) Metamodernism. In philosophy and aesthetics, metamodernism is a recent reaction to postmodernism informed by elements of both modernism and postmodernism.